Portishead: Dummy [ISLAND]

Why you'll love it

Dummy won the 1995 Mercury Prize, has gone triple platinum in the UK and is on every list of the best albums of the '90s. "Sour Times", "Roads" and "Glory Box" still sound like nothing else.

This edition

• Single LP, 10 tracks
• Go! Beat/Island pressing of the 1994 album
• Original vinyl running order

About the album

Geoff Barrow and Beth Gibbons met on a government job-training course in 1991 and started sketching songs in Neneh Cherry's kitchen, of all places. What they built back home in Bristol was something entirely new: dusty hip-hop breakbeats and vinyl crackle, spy-movie samples, theremin wails and Adrian Utley's twangy guitar, all wrapped around Gibbons' fragile, aching voice.

Dummy arrived in August of 1994 and quietly became the soundtrack to a million late nights. "Sour Times" and "Glory Box" were the hits, "Roads" is one of the most devastating songs of the decade, and the whole thing holds together like a noir film you never want to end. It won the Mercury Prize, all but defined trip-hop, and has never once sounded dated.

Also at Kops: more Portishead on vinyl · browse Electronic

Tracklist

Listen

On Go! Beat/Island, a reissue of the 1994 album.